Data storage systems contain large amounts of data. This data includes personal data, such as financial data, customer/client/patient contact data, audio/visual data, and much more. Computer systems often contain word processing documents, engineering diagrams, spreadsheets, business strategy presentations, email mailboxes, and so on. With the proliferation of computer systems and the ease of creating content, the amount of content in an organization has expanded rapidly. Even small offices often have more information stored than any single employee can know about or locate.
To that end, both companies and individuals rely on data storage systems to store, protect, and/or hold old data, such as data no longer actively needed. Often, these data storage systems perform data migration, moving data from primary storage (containing actively needed data) to secondary storage (such as backup storage or archives). Typical data storage systems transfer data in the forms of files, folders, and so on. For example, the typical data storage system may transfer data from a data store associated with a user to secondary storage while maintaining the structure and application format of the files themselves.
To restore the data, these systems then require knowledge of applications that create the data. Additionally, some files, can be very large, and restoring a large file can be costly, time consuming, and resource intensive.
The need exists for a system that overcomes the above problems, as well as one that provides additional benefits. Overall, the examples herein of some prior or related systems and their associated limitations are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of existing or prior systems will become apparent to those of skill in the art upon reading the following Detailed Description.